Cameras and other image recording devices often use one or more image sensors, such as a charge-coupled device (CCD) image sensor or a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) image sensor. When an image of a scene is captured, the scene can include objects that can be positioned or illuminated in a way that can make it difficult to represent the objects with acceptable detail. For example, an object can be positioned in a shadow, or two objects can be sufficiently far apart in distance that the camera is not able to focus on both objects adequately. This means one or both objects may be blurred in the image.
Depth of field is a term that can represent the distance between the nearest and farthest objects in a scene that appear acceptably sharp in an image. Typically, a camera may focus at only one distance, so the sharpness of objects located at different distances in the scene decrease on either side of the focused distance. If a camera is focused on an object in a scene that is near the camera, objects located farther away from the camera, or closer to the camera than the object, can be blurred in the image. Likewise, if a camera is focused on an object that is farther away from the camera, objects that are closer to the camera can be blurred in the image.